


Firelight

by Charmtion



Series: Warmth in Winter [1]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: ... and all the Fluff that Comes After., F/M, Forge Sex, Loss of Virginity, Reunions, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-24
Updated: 2019-04-24
Packaged: 2020-01-31 10:53:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18589807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Charmtion/pseuds/Charmtion
Summary: Wolf she may be — all hard eyes and harder edges — but he sees something of the doe in her still. Her fingers shake a little where they rest on the plump muscles of his shoulders; he catches the tremble of her lip before she sinks her teeth into it to hide her fear.Arya and Gendry find life and love in each other — even as the dead turn the world to ice and shadow all around them [8x02].





	Firelight

She is softer by firelight — she always was.

He _knows_ , he who has seen her by half a hundred different lights. Moon, sun, torch, star; none set her so soft as firelight. A kick of cloth, she is free of the shadows cast by cloak and tunic. He leans back a moment, watches as she dips to step out from the pool of wool and leather bundled about her ankles.

Like velvet, the way her skin shimmers: bare, beckoning, begging for the warmth of his rough-shod hands, the flicker of his tongue — forge-hot, _famished_ — to mark each and every speckle and scar scattered as stars across its bone-white surface. He grits his teeth, but still half a breath skitters out. A wolf scenting the air, she lifts her head at the sound; dark eyes follow the path of his storm-blue gaze, flit up as he swoops to meet her stare.

A wolf, for true; but there is something of the doe in the way she looks at him, the way her breath catches in her throat as he reaches out to trail a fingertip across one of the raised slashes puckering her ribs. She twists toward him; his thumb glides the unmarked valley between her breasts, trails a path down to the wine-dark scar cradling her hip. His eyes dip to run with the thumb-rasp he passes over it.

Somewhere above him, her voice sounds soft as the firelight that limns her. “Touch, but don’t ask… not tonight.”

“I won’t ask,” he promises, running his fingers back to her waist. “Not tonight, not ever… not till the day comes when you _want_ to tell me, Arya.”

Her ribs fill his palm as she shudders a sigh. “That day may never come, Gendry.”

Dark steel, rough grey stone — her eyes shine with the edge of each as he looks up to meet her gaze, nodding all the while. Wolf she may be — all hard eyes and harder edges — but he sees something of the doe in her still. Her fingers shake a little where they rest on the plump muscles of his shoulders; he catches the tremble of her lip before she sinks her teeth into it to hide her fear. She glares at him, nostrils flaring at the light of recognition in his eyes, tosses her head. A warm wave of ebony, her hair falls over her shoulder; he only smiles at her, runs his fingers through the dark strands.

“It doesn’t have to,” he says softly. “Whatever our days come to be… _that_ day need never come unless you want it to, my lo— m’ _lady_.”

Steel softens, stone cracks. “Love now, is it?”

“It is what it is… Arya Stark.”

Her brows twitch together at the stubborn set of his jaw, the low rumble of his voice burbling like a brook from deep within his chest. A half-smile lifts her lips, shimmers like her body in the firelight. Pearl teeth, velvet skin; he bites his lip to fend off the hunger at his want for the taste of each. It burns in his eyes as an ember even so. Her eyes light at that; the smile widens on her lips — then vanishes as she steps into the circle of his arms.

Leaning back against the sacking, he runs his hands from her ribs to her hips, kneads the soft white flesh with sword-strong fingertips. Her lips part in the same breath as her legs; a sweet little moan whistles past her teeth as she sits astride him, rocks back against the grip he keeps at her hips to dip her mouth to his. She tastes of the wine they drank at dinner: rich and sweet, dark as the shadows drawing in across the hills.

Fingers in his hair, wrenching his head back to deepen her kiss as her hipbones shift beneath his palms, her eyes tight shut till he brushes his knuckles down from her hip. His fingertips leave fire-streaks burning on her skin; soft grey metal-melt, the gaze she pours onto him now. Her thighs part for his touch, rock closed round his fingers as he glides them up inside her.

Her lips move to form a soundless shape — _Gendry_ — then they are pressing close, hot and heavy as her warmth around his fingers. He takes her kiss as it lands, returns it in kind: fierce, frantic — _furious_ as he twists his thumb and sends her arching away from his lips, her head tipped back, her throat open for his teeth to mark as she gives a shout that makes the torches flicker and dance in their sconces.

Shadows spin with the fire-glow that colours her cheeks soft as velvet; she rolls her throat free of his lips, nudges her brow against his. Their eyes meet and he gives a low groan to see that the doe is gone from her gaze. She is a wolf now, through and through, nipping at his lip with sharp white teeth, rocking her hips against the grip he keeps between her legs, slick and hot and hungry.

“I want you inside,” she breathes. “I want to feel it.”

He _knows_ what she wants — he who has known her every want all these years — but still he makes her wait, stroking his fingers gently inside her. “Feel what?”

“ _Gendry_.” Her voice is a snarl, impatient and imploding to match the silver-sheen of her eyes as she rolls her hips in time with his touch. “I want to feel alive before the dead arrive at the gates. I want to feel what every other girl has felt while the blood is still warm in her veins. I want to feel lo— _you_ …. I want to feel you.”

He smirks even as she snarls. “Love now, is it?”

“It is what it is… now get inside me, Gendry Waters.”

“As m’lady commands.”

Her snarl fades to a smile at that; he feels the shape of it as he presses a kiss to her mouth, frees his fingers, shifts her hips with his hands. He tries to be tender as he lowers her onto his cock, but the feel of her makes him giddy. Like a pulse of fire, the way she laps around him; he fights hard the urge to thrust up inside her, eddy her high as an eagle upon his cock, clench at her hips tight enough to break the bones shifting beneath the skin. A muscle flickers in his jaw as he grits his teeth. She breaks from their kiss, runs her lips down across his chin as she rests her brow to his, drinks deep his gaze.

She sees the question in his eyes, gives a smile that hangs in the air soft as a whisper. “You won’t hurt me… I _want_ you, Gendry — gods, I want you.”

So he moves, tender as he can make it, and shudders to feel her rock and moan and shiver in his arms. Her smile never slips even as she folds herself around him, fingers finding hard grip at his shoulder and in his hair, lips leaving salt-streak kisses at the crook of his neck. They melt in the same breath that shakes her smile as he moves inside her — slow and full and deep — till his name tangles on her tongue and her fingertips turn to dagger-points pricking at his skin.

It comes upon her sudden as a storm, turns her knock-kneed and wide-eyed as a deer, sets her shivering as oaks shaken by the wind. She stares down at him, a wolf with a doe’s soft wild eyes, her brow twisting as her hips to keep pace with his quickening rhythm.

A thready cry floods from her throat to set its smoke upon his skin. He grips her tighter as she trembles from the release still cloaking her flesh in flame, turns his face into her hair, breathes deep the scent that lingers there: wine, woodsmoke, wildflowers, _winter_. They fall back — limbs a tangle of smokeberry vines — soft and warm as the firelight limning the sheen of their skin.

 

*

 

He opens his eyes to find her turned away from him, hair a fall of ebony clouding the space between them as she twists her fingers into the fur-trimmed collar of the cloak drawn up over her breasts. _His_ cloak — he feels a strange glow take root between the crooks of his ribs at the sight of it: a scrap of wool that smells of him draped across the velvet of her skin.

“How did it feel?”

She stirs at the lilt of his voice, but keeps her face turned away. “Like my belly would burst… like a blaze of heat melting the skin from my bones.”

“Sounds painful.”

She turns at that, her dark eyes flitting from the pulse-point beating at his throat to the storm-blue gaze that stays warm even as the quip fades from his tongue. Gently, she trails a fingertip along his jaw, her smile at odds with the frown dappling her brow.

“I have known more pain than most men can imagine,” she says softly. “That was not pain, Gendry… it was far sweeter — and yet twice as sharp.”

“Sweet and sharp all at once,” he says quietly. “I’ve heard men tell of death just like that.”

“Dead men tell no tales,” she whispers, fingertip dragging from his jaw to feather his lips. “Sweet is the joy at cheating death, sharp is the fear of having something to _lose_ should it take you. _That_ is the tale the living know and tell well enough.” She frowns at the tremble that floods as ice-prickles across her skin. “And one I know well enough, too… _now_.”

“Now?”

“I had nothing to lose before tonight.”

“And now?”

“Now, I have _everything_ to lose.”

“Your life, your home, your family — ”

“ _You_ , Gendry… you.”

Half a word spills from his tongue to make its mark upon the air; she presses her fingers to his lips to silence him, dark eyes wild as the firelight dancing its shadows across the walls. He shuts his mouth, opens his arms instead. She presses up against him as mountains to the sky, each peak and dip and valley of her skin a sweet dark song bleeding its heat into his body. He brushes back the ebony hair from her brow, presses a kiss there, prays the warmth of it will linger long beyond the wax-and-wane of the moon without.

“Life is life, death is death,” he murmurs. “Tonight is neither.”

She smooths her cheek back and forth against his chest. “What is it then?”

“It is what it is… nothing more, nothing less.” He feels the breath hitch in his throat. “All I know is I am glad to have spent it with m’lady… and my _family_ , Arya Stark.”

She says nothing, but he feels the shape of her smile as she nestles a kiss to the warm brown skin above his heart. Soon, she sags lax with sleep into the valleys of blood and bone that make his body. He whispers kisses to her brow, pulls up his cloak to settle it over her shoulders, prays it will carry something of the scent that lingers on her skin when he hefts it come the morrow: wine, woodsmoke, wildflowers, winter, _Arya_ — exactly as she is now, sleep-heavy in his arms, soft as firelight in a world of ice, warm and good and _his_ even as dark shadows draw in across the hills without.

 

* * *

**Author's Note:**

>  **NB** : I am a book-reader that hasn’t yet watched the show… but I saw _that_ scene online and felt such a rush of warmth and happiness at Gendrya becoming canon that I wanted to flesh it out a little in my own way. Hope you enjoyed; feel free to leave feedback! ❤️


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